A PERVERTED Coatbridge pensioner has been jailed for 18 months after sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl with a learning impairment – and the child’s devastated parents have hit out at the length of the “lenient sentence”.

Depraved Charles Walker – a grandfather and father-of-five – targeted the youngster on two occasions, molesting her and exposing himself.

The beast, of Mitchell Street, Kirkwood, had originally faced several charges but on Monday the Crown accepted his guilty plea to just one offence.

During one disturbing incident the 65-year-old monster abused the girl, who has autism, after she had been helping to feed fish.

Walker’s innocent young victim – now seven – still has nightmares about her horrendous experience and her mum has told the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser about the harrowing impact Walker’s actions have had on her beloved daughter.

She said: “She is not coping with things very well; she has her good days but they are few and far between.

“She is a lot worse at night. I’ve had to hop into bed with her and talk to her as she still remembers a lot of what happened.

“She has autism and remembering her experiences leads to her having frequent meltdowns and my husband and I have to sit with her for a while and talk to help calm her down.

“We are trying our best to keep her mind off everything by taking her to dancing and things like that, but it is very hard.”

Walker admitted sexually assaulting the little girl on two occasions between October 2014 and March last year, when she was aged just five and six.

The brave youngster revealed to her mother that Walker had touched her inappropriately and DNA from the sex offender was found on her underwear.

The little one’s mum recalled the awful moment when she discovered what had happened: “She came to me and told me what Walker had done and then I told my husband and it was an almost impossible thing to hear.

“We were devastated and, at first, she distanced herself from her dad which made things even harder.

“The whole experience has been a nightmare. We felt a combination of rage, terrible sadness and a desire to protect our daughter.”

A judge told Walker at the High Court in Edinburgh that he would have jailed him for two years for the offence but for his guilty plea.

Lord Brailsford said he accepted that the victim had been spared having to give evidence and the expense of a trial was avoided.

But this punishment wasn’t enough in the eyes of the girl’s angry parents who say they will fight to have Walker’s sentence increased.

The victim’s mum added: “My husband and I were in court when the sentence was handed down and we couldn’t believe our ears. We were dumbfounded and felt a mix of pure anger and shock.

“Eighteen months in jail is nowhere near enough as he has caused our little girl such heartache. Goodness knows what long-term impact this could have on her.

“Our first thought when the sentence came in was, ‘we are going to fight this’. We will be pursuing every avenue – through the correct legal channels – to see Walker’s prison sentence increased.”